The Cottage of Wonders

“Charm is a mask. The Cottage wears two, and neither is the truth.”

— Seraphis Nightvale, Librarian of the Last Home

From the Garden path, the Cottage is offensively normal. Timber beams sit square, shutters gleam with fresh paint, roses bloom in obedient rows. Even the air feels staged, as if the breeze rehearsed where it should blow.

The door is always ajar, never squeaking, never swelling in the damp. It waits politely, like a host who has already chosen what you are about to drink. Nothing outwardly wrong. Which is, of course, the wrongest thing of all.

Inside, the Smile Slips

Cross the threshold, and the mask collapses. The Cottage is no quaint retreat—it is a hoard with furniture.

The ceiling bristles with cages, each containing something too soft, too sharp, or too shapeless to be named politely. Tanks slosh with liquids that bend light into nervous angles. Bottles jostle for attention on sagging shelves, some glowing faintly, others sweating with a cold you can feel in your teeth.

Fungi twitch in boxes beside crates of ore and minerals etched with stencils that say, with admirable understatement, Do Not Open. The smell is cloying—sour cheese braided with crushed flowers—and it lingers long after you leave.

At the centre stands a sprawling workbench: brass kettles, glass retorts, looping coils, stained notebooks, and tools better suited to surgery than comfort. Nothing is tidy. Everything is in use.

The Merchant of Bottled Miracles

Fizz Thimblewick is the Cottage’s keeper, though no one recalls him ever building it. He resembles a gnome, or claims to, and wears a pair of peculiar goggles whose lenses make his eyes seem just a little too large. Few question the affectation—it suits him, and the alternative would be less comfortable to consider.

He smells faintly of sour cheese and crushed flowers, a fragrance that clings to anyone who lingers too long at his counter. He is always smiling, always too ready with a vial, and always willing to provide exactly what you ask for—at a price you will regret calculating afterwards.

Fizz does not haggle. He does not explain. He sells. And the Cottage, obligingly, provides.

A Stockroom Without Logic

Nothing here is catalogued, yet nothing is ever missing. The shelves look random, but the required item appears if Fizz wills it.

Some jars hum faintly in the throat if you stand too close. Others rearrange their labels when you blink. A few react only to disbelief—growing louder the moment you decide they cannot possibly exist.

This is not inventory. This is inevitability bottled and shelved.

The Rules of Commerce

A transaction is deceptively simple. You ask. He listens. He poses three questions, though you will only remember one.

Then comes the price. It will be payable. It will not be fair. The bottle he presses into your hand will do what you asked for—and at least one thing you forgot to forbid.

Above the door, a placard changes handwriting each morning. The message does not change: “Refunds not available in this Realm.”

The Lure of “Specials”

Fizz’s commissioned work is reliable. When you ask for a potion, it will do precisely what you requested. The cure cures. The toxin kills. The draught delivers its promise with unnerving accuracy. The only trick lies in the price, and Fizz never pretends otherwise.

The trouble begins with his Specials. These are the bottles lined neatly by the door, already corked, already labelled, already cheap enough to tempt the cautious. They usually work. Almost always. But never without an aftertaste, a side effect, or a complication that no one would have wished for.

Regulars know better. They buy two: one to address the problem, and one to apologise for how it was solved.

The Company He Keeps

Two familiars keep watch from the rafters. Smudge, a sleek black cat with too many teeth and too many opinions, drifts lazily overhead, purring only when lies are told—and louder still when they are believed.

Beside him lurks Dillon, a half-featherless owl who looks permanently bewildered, as though he has been concussed by reality itself. He blinks at corners where nothing ought to be, and more often than not, he is right.

Fizz names them as though they were ordinary pets. This, more than anything, is what makes them alarming.

Side Effects, By Design

Fizz never discloses consequences until they arrive. Patrons have left with sudden fluency in languages that will not be invented for centuries, with compulsions that forbid stepping on cracks, or with the uncanny sense they have lent their name to someone and forgotten to reclaim it.

Some walk away cured. Some walk away altered. A few do not walk away at all. The Cottage does not keep a ledger. It does not need to.

Final Consideration

Fizz’s Cottage of Wonders is the Garden’s most courteous lie. From outside, it offers charm. Inside, it sells transformations at prices you cannot calculate until you have already paid.

Fizz Thimblewick will smile, Smudge will purr, Dillon will blink, and the Cottage itself will listen. Step carefully, if you step at all. Here, the wonders are real—just never the ones you wanted.